Show Some Love for the Humble Harbour Porpoise

Sea air, salt in your face, soaring seabirds – damn I’ve missed this during lockdown! As the rib headed out from the historical south Devon harbour of Teignmouth into Lyme Bay, I gulped deep lung fulls of ocean breeze, and settled in for the ride. Immediately I felt more settled, my mind is never calmer than when out on the water.

My weary eyes strain from the search as they scan the blue-green shimmer of the surface for any sign of life. Life that has more place below the waves than above. I raise my binoculars from my chest to my eyes and peer towards the horizon, the edge of my world, seeking that glint of sunlight off the dark back of a mammal at the surface or the tell-tale snow white willow-the-wisp splash from a distant dolphin. Nothing. No feeding seabirds, no sharks basking, not even the distant silhouette of a passing freighter. Empty. As if we were thousands of miles offshore in the middle of one of the vast ocean voids.